


from ashes to embers to flames

by onthelasttrain



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Depression, Gen, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Middle School, veronica is in this but you do not need to know heathers to read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthelasttrain/pseuds/onthelasttrain
Summary: One word. One question. That is all it takes for Janis' world to come crashing down, leaving her lying defencelessness and afraid amongst the smoke. As she lies there alone, she fears an end to everything she's known; her friends, her school life, even Janis herself seems to be burning away before her.But Janis is a phoenix. And phoenixes don't burn away.





	from ashes to embers to flames

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the tags, there is one mention of the d slur; it is at the end of the paragraph that starts "it was just a question, janis".  
In the final edit, I did astrix it out because I didn't feel comfrotable writing it, but it is still there, just censored out.  
Also this fic is filled with my own headcanons, because you're in my world now.  
And most importantly of all-happy Mean Girls day! Go wear pink!

There are some moments where the world just freezes. Stops spinning on its little axis, stops flying around our little solar system, stops orbiting our nice little sun. Just stops altogether; people stop talking, cars stop driving, dogs stop barking and even the wind stops blowing. Every single thing on the lump of rock humans were fortunate enough to be able to call home, down to the tiniest blade of grass and the smallest little fish, just stop.

Janis Sarkisian is twelve when she experiences it.

The day seemed normal enough at the start, no sign of any world shattering events taking place any time soon. The sun peeked out and darted behind the October clouds with no rhyme or reason, leaves began falling off trees and landing in and around Janis’ feet, the urge to jump on and crush them irresistible. She gets into school at the normal time for her, which is ten minutes before anyone else, so she can sit on the steps and work on her sketches before showing them to her art teacher before school officially starts. She and her art teacher have an unusual relationship, as far as students and teachers go; she keeps the door open for Janis before and after school, telling her she can show her any new works she’s come up with. She’s got to be the coolest teacher in that school and definitely one of the coolest people in the world, full stop.

Sitting on the wall in the yard, Janis picks up a red leaf and studies it, immediately drawn to the vibrancy of its colour, the way the bright red slowly fades to a sunset yellow hue at the bottom. She slips it into the back of her sketchbook, hoping to get a better study of it at home and maybe get her paints at the same colour, and keeps working on the piece she’s doing now. The alien princess’ purple eyes look back at her, her pointed ears poking out from underneath her still-white hair (she hasn’t decided on the hair colour yet), her dress slipping off one shoulder, the skirt torn from battle, her arm raised holding the faint outline of a laser gun. She scowls to the outside world, angry at the destruction of her home world, hell bent on vengeance. Janis carefully colours in the dress, making sure she doesn’t go over the black outline marked in pen.

“Janis,” a thin voice says in front of her. She looks up, squinting slightly in the light of the sun, which decided to come back out for a minute. She knows who it is immediately; no one could ever mistake that voice for someone else. Her best friend, Regina, stands before her, twirling a gold lock of hair around her finger, her eyes flitting up and down Janis. Though she doesn’t show it, Janis’ skin already begins to crawl. Sometimes when she’s with Regina, she feels like a fly under a microscope, like Regina’s poking and prodding at her with a needle, taking notes of her movements, her hairstyle, what she says and how she says it, putting it in either the “right” or “wrong” category. She’s sure she’s being silly; Regina has told her she loves her plenty of times, but she can’t shake the feeling.

“What’s up?” she asks, sticking her pencil behind her ear. Regina snorts, hiding behind her hand. It could either be a giggle or a sneeze; Janis isn’t sure.

“Well,” she begins, tapping a bunch of pink envelopes in her left hand against her palm. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t invite you to my 13th birthday party.”

“You can’t?” Janis asks, slowly closing her sketchbook. She feels like someone has stuck their hand inside her stomach and is punching every corner they can find. “But why? I always come to your birthday. You came to mine.”

“Yeah, I came to your 12th birthday,” Regina reminds her. “I’m turning 13.” A part of Janis wants to remind her that she’ll be 13 in January, wants to promise she can come to that party, and it’ll be just like Regina wants, but she clamps her lips shut, remembering her dignity. “And my mom said I can have a pool party.”

“But… I can swim, you know I can.” Regina snickers again, unmistakable this time. Janis wipes her sweaty hands on her jeans. Sometimes she wishes she wasn’t so proud, then she could just grovel like Gretchen does and win all Regina’s affection, avoiding the difficult conversations like this one.

“Janis… look I can’t invite you to my birthday party because I think you’re a lesbian.”

And just at that moment, the world stops spinning.

Janis can’t hear anything, only garbled sounds that might appear like words if she was able to connect her brain to her ears. The word “lesbian” slams into her over and over and over again, hitting her in the face and stomach and chest despite its lack of a physical presence. That word has never passed her lips, she’s made sure of it. Never ever come out of her at all. She’s nodded along when Regina talks about cute boys, pretends to swoon over the posters on Karen’s wall, even puts one up herself of Leonardo Di Caprio after Regina tears one out of a magazine and hands it to her, telling her he is “Janis’ type” and the poster would give her room some much needed colour. She’s avoided the eyes of girls who might turn her head, buried herself in the relative safety of Regina, Karen and Gretchen. That word may have crossed her mind, but never her mouth.

But it is in her diary. Her diary, hidden beneath her two mattresses, sealed with a lock to which only she has the key, hanging around her neck. She never ever takes it off and Regina doesn’t know she has a diary, much less where her diary is. She can’t, can she?

“Janis? Janis!” she hears Regina’s voice, cutting through the static in her mind. “I mean are you a lesbian?”

Are you, Janis?

Yes.

No.

She can’t be one, says the part of her brain she clings to during lonely, confused nights.

She is one, though, hisses she part of her brain that she listens to once in a blue moon when a girl is making her heart flutter.

“What are you?” Regina demands, the echo of her high voice rolling up and down the yard. She comes back into focus, the yellow and pink swirl forming into a human person again.

“I…” Her voice catches in her throat as her heart hammers against her ribs. She wants to ask why, why is she doing this, why her, but her throat is getting tighter and tighter by the minute. She curls her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms. She wishes Regina would go away because the urge to bite them is almost overwhelming despite her swearing to Regina she’s broken the habit. She looks down at the sketchbook in her lap as a new, sudden anger hits her, blocking any pain she can feel. She likes it, so she leans into it with everything she can, letting it wrap its tentacles around her. “Am a space alien and I have four butts!”

She regrets it as soon as she says it. Especially when she looks behind Regina and sees the small crowd of girls and realises there has been an audience for their little spectacle. Regina puffs her cheeks out, her eyes bright with amusement and Janis feels her stomach turn. She pushes past Regina, past the girls, past everyone in the yard, avoiding concerned teachers as the world tilts and sways. She bursts into the school hall and stumbles towards the bathroom like a zombie, all the while tears prick at and burn her eyes. Everyone notices her, some kind older kids try to talk to her but she doesn’t give them a response, the ringing in her ears drowning them out anyways.

She finally reaches the safety of the girls’ room, barricading herself inside and pressing her hands against the walls while her heart races. The walls and ceiling feel like they’re closing in on her, pressing on her from every side until she’s forced to curl up as small as she can make herself. She wants to press her face into her knees until the tears stop and her hands shake less. She wants to stay in that stall until the sky is black and the school is empty. Unfortunately for her, the day has other ideas and the bell rings before she’s even spent five minutes in her little sanctuary.

When she steps out of the bathroom, her legs still shaky and her eyes still puffy, there’s another kid outside, clutching his bag awkwardly. She recognises him immediately; Damian Hubbard. Everyone and their mother knows who Damian Hubbard is. Even if it wasn’t for the waves he made last year after officially coming out as trans, and then gay, his larger than life personality makes people look at him and laugh with him not at him. She likes that about him.

“Hi,” he says softly. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she says, wiping her wet cheeks, thankful she didn’t wear eyeliner. “Why wouldn’t I be?” He remains silent, regarding her with a glance at her tear-streaked face. “Allergies.”

“Oh,” he says. He looks down, an uncomfortable silence settling between the two. “Want me to walk you to your homeroom?”

“No,” she says quickly. “No thanks. I’m already late.” She brushes past him, clutching at her backpack straps. She feels bad for ignoring him but doesn’t look back at him or even say anything. She can only handle so much.

For the rest of the day, hardly anyone speaks to her. She wonders if she would be able to speak to them if they tried because all she can think about is trying to get her hands to stop shaking or her heart to stop racing or for her stomach to feel normal again.

Why and how did it all come to this? Regina was meant to be her friend. Ever since they were 9 and Regina had approached Janis in the playground and offered to trade Barbies with her, they had been best friends, with Regina even braiding Janis a special friendship bracelet. Gretchen and Karen were there too, but she had never minded them, even gotten along with them and called them friends after a few weeks, assuming they would all be friends together, right through middle school and then high school and then college. Janis had created a big collage of it over the summer; they’d all go to UCLA together, where she’d study Art and Gretchen would study business, while Regina became a model and Karen became the weather girl. Regina had even called it cute. That was just months ago, and now Regina whispered things in Gretchen’s ear while casting mere glances back at Janis and sniggering at her, leaning away from her like she was infectious. Every time Regina looks at Janis, the nausea in her stomach only increases.

All the while, the question Regina asked her clings to her, digging underneath her skin and slithering around like a parasitic worm. One word in particular. Over the past year or so, Janis had found herself having more and more internal debates, asking herself questions she felt that deep down, hidden under layers or denial and false reasoning, she knew the answer to. For a while, she had assumed that maybe she was just a late bloomer and would one day wake up and be ready to drool over whatever hot boy Regina was obsessed with this week. Except for one day when that girl Daisy sat next to her in science and Janis felt her heart pound every time she looked at her, felt butterflies in her stomach when their hands brushed together. The longer she would brush it off, the stronger it would become as she began imagining going on dates with her and holding her hand and then finally, she saw Daisy kissing a boy during a dance and wanted to scream.

She knows what a lesbian is, of course. She’s far from sheltered at home and even if she was, she had a sneaking suspicion she could find out all on her own. She’s already stumbled across fanfiction rated for people far older than she is. But in her mind, she had always thought it was something “other”, something far from her own life. Something to be respected at a distance but would never come near to her.

Oh, how wrong she was.

She had kept it close to her chest ever since working it out. She likes girls, she knows that, even if she doesn’t want to say it. She wants to date girls. Not boys. Girls. No one else knows, except her and her diary. And Regina. And who knows who else now.

She somehow makes it to lunch, wading slowly through the sea of her fellow pupils. Far ahead of her, she sees Karen, Gretchen and Regina marching ahead, their arms tightly interlocked. She calls out to them, but they don’t so much as slow down for her. Despite her impressive height thanks to her early growth spurt, Janis feels smaller than anyone else. She feels like a tiny little bug, sad and pathetic, looking up at the people above and trying not to get squished. She pushes on, trying to find comfort that maybe the worst of it is behind her now.

It's not.

There’s already a small crowd at her locker when she arrives, making her heart plunge into overdrive. People begin noticing her, just one or two at first, but then it ripples out; some gasping, some eyes shifting nervously from the locker to Janis, some giggling. Janis takes shaky steps closer to her locker to make out the words written in black Sharpie, her cheeks going red as the letters move and flip in front of her, sounding them under her breath, just enough for herself to hear. She hopes at least.

“Sba-spa-space,” she mutters, her dyslexia making the words squirm and move in front of her before settling down. “Space py-dy-” She catches herself at the last minute, refusing to allow that word to get out of her mouth. She’s not sure she can even speak any more as breathing becomes more and more difficult, and something slithers up her throat, something thick and vile.

“Hey,” a gentle voice says into her hear. Despite it all, she had half-wished it was Regina, but it’s not, the voice is too soft, not the cold severe tone of her (former?) best friend. She turns around and finds herself looking helplessly at Damian Hubbard. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” She lets him turn her around, her own limbs feeling numb, and guide her away from her locker and the painful words written on it. But before they can get anywhere, they find themselves blocked off, three harrowing figures standing in their paths. Janis is reminded of the three witches from Macbeth, which they’re studying in English.

“It was just a question, Janis,” Regina says, her tone almost amused. “Why can’t you just answer it. Are you a lesbian?” Janis opens her mouth, a feeble sound escapes, and Regina smiles. It feels like a knife in her gut. “Come on, Janis, answer it. Are you a d***?”

Regina gets her answer. Sort of. She gets it in the form of Janis vomiting in front of her, unable to stop. Regina jumps back, squealing in disgust until Janis can only pitifully heave and whimper. Damian wipes around her mouth with a tissue and if she had the strength, she’d thank him.

“Do you need to go home?” he whispers to her. She simply nods, her ability to speak apparently lying in a heap on the floor in front of her. He carries her away from the overlapping voices shouting out how much her puke stinks and how they can’t believe she just did that. He leads her down to the front office and she leans on him the whole way, her shaky legs grateful for the rest.

“Thank you,” she sighs as he sits her down. He hands her a bottle of water from his bag, frowning at her when she refuses it.

“I can wash it if you’re scared of me catching germs,” he tells her. “But I promise I’ve had all my shots. Go on, it’ll help. I’ll get the front office to call your parents.” She nods, muttering something along the lines of ‘okay’, but she’s too drained to actually make sounds. Her head is pounding fiercely and her throat and tongue feel like sandpaper no matter how much water she drinks.

Her dad comes for her within fifteen minutes, after Damian has been yelled at to go to class. He pats her head before he goes, telling her to feel better and he’ll see her tomorrow. Despite the pain in her stomach and head, and if she’s honest, her heart, she smiles, feeling warmth bloom in her chest and finally chasing away the cold numbness and heavy anxiety. When her dad arrives he doesn’t waste any time in running over to her, brushing her hair away from her face and asking her what she ate, how she feels now, checking her temperature and asking if she’s on her period (asking in his native French of course, to avoid making this less awkward in case of passing students or teachers with a bat-like hearing ability). He helps her stand and puts a gentle hand on her back as he guides her to the door, but before they can leave, her father is called back by the principal.

“Mr Sarkisian,” she says, holding her hand out awkwardly. “A word, please.”

“Can it wait?” he asks. “She needs to go home.” The principal hesitates but eventually nods, swallowing when she takes in Janis’ pale face.

“Of course,” she says. “Feel better soon, Janis.” Janis nods and follows her dad to the car. He hands her a bottle of water and asks if she needs the heat on or off and despite the way she feels Regina’s words crawling underneath her skin, making her restless, she smiles.

She thinks (or hopes) she’ll feel more at peace when she’s at home, in her own bed, snuggled under her own comforters, maybe clinging to her stuffed cat and holding him against her chest will make some of it go away. Sadly, the opposite occurs. Her dad helps her into her bed, grabbing her a fresh set of pyjamas from the dryer and asking if she needs anything else. She shakes her head, telling him she just needs to sleep. She buries her head in her pillow, willing her body to hurry up and catch up with her mind and go the hell to sleep already, but it refuses. She feels as though there are live wires stuck underneath her arms, and their relentless buzzing keeps her awake along with the frantic beat of her heart.

She wants it all to stop. She wants to stop feeling altogether, to curl up into a tiny, tiny little ball until everything is gone forever. She wants the feeling that her stomach is plummeting through the floor and that someone is inside her head punching her forehead to stop, wants to be able to breathe normally. Most of all, she wants to stop feeling alone, like she’s the only person standing in an empty room with Regina’s words echoing off the walls and ricocheting back to her.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she opens her eyes to look at the clock a good hour and a half have passed and her body is stiff, begging her to just stay in bed despite the way the blankets suffocate her and make her back prickle and sting with sweat. She kicks them away, so hard that she sees the edges disappear over the foot of her bed and onto the floor. She sits on her bed, anxiously playing footsie with herself. Her anger and fear and confusion dispelled somehow as she slept; now she just feels worn out. Numb, even. Like the world could be ending right outside her window and she wouldn’t be bothered to care.

She hears someone knocking softly on her bedroom door and tells her parents-it has to be her parents- to come in. They enter nervously, her mother sighing deeply when she sees her in her pyjamas already, Purrlock Holmes sitting sprawled out on her lap.

“How are you feeling now?” her mom asks.

_Deflated. Empty. Sad if you want to use simple words_ she thinks.

“Fine,” is what she says instead. “Tired.”

“Janis,” her dad begins. “Your principal told me what those people wrote on your locker. That word, that awful, awful word-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says hurriedly, the memory springing up and launching a surprise attack. She wraps her hand tightly around Purrlock. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” her mom asks. “Do you want to talk about any of it? About what those girls were doing? About-” Regina. Her mom doesn’t say it but she doesn’t have to. Janis shakes her head again. “Okay, do you want something to eat?” Another shake of her head; despite how hollowed out she feels, she also knows if she eats anything else she’ll more than likely throw up again, which will only bring her back to that school hallway.

“I just want to sleep,” she says again. Her parents look at each other uncertainly, her dad wringing his hands. “Please. I just need to sleep it off.”

“Okay,” her dad says reluctantly. “Can we wake you for dinner?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll feel better by then.” She crawls back under her covers, pulling them tightly around her, hopefully signalling that she wants the conversation to be over.

“Fais de beaux rêves,” her dad says just as he’s leaving. Janis would smile if only she had the energy. Instead, she lets her heavy limbs sink into the mattress and weigh her down. Tears fall onto her pillow silently as she tries to fall asleep again, the pain in head at least falling into a steady rhythm. She tucks Purrlock’s head under her chin, positioning his little paws around her neck in a hug. She shifts into so many different positions before sleep finally claims her and even then she’s restless, waking briefly nearly every half an hour before falling back asleep, kicking the blankets off her and needing them back in the next second, as if God is deliberately making her sick so she can skip school. If that’s what’s happening, Janis makes a mental note to pay attention next time she’s in church as a thank you.

“Oh, Jan,” her mother sighs when she checks on her the next morning. Janis doesn’t need a mirror to know what she looks like; she can feel the bags under her eyes. “You’re clearly not up for school today.”

“No arguments here,” she mumbles, making her mom chuckle at least. She bends down and presses a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Your dad’s working from home today,” she explains. “So he can keep an eye on you. Want a bucket?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. She doubts she’ll need, feeling hollowed out, like her insides have been scraped clean without so much as a speck, but she’ll humour her mother for now.

Not long after she leaves the bucket by her bedside and tells Janis she loves her, she hears her mom closing the front door, her car starting up in the drive, and then it’s just Janis and her dad. In the utter silence of her bedroom, she can hear him clambering away downstairs, probably moving from the kitchen to his study/her art studio. She wonders if she should ask for food, but she also feels like there’s a blockade in her throat, stopping anything she might try to swallow.

Her dad comes up after an hour, his Bluetooth earpiece in, a white shirt over his Superman pyjama pants. During that time, all she had done was lay numbly staring at the ceiling. When she had heard the doorknob moving, she shifted onto her side, hoping to give her dad the image of a normal child.

“How are you feeling?” he asks her gently.

“Okay,” she lies.

“Do you want food?”

“No, thanks,” she says. “Not hungry.”

“Okay,” he says, his brow furrowing in thought as he strokes her hair gently, almost sending her back to sleep. “Hey, want to come down and watch TV in the big room? You can take your blankets and your pillows. And your kitty if he wants to come down.” Ever since Janis had got Purrlock when she was five, her dad had always spoken about him as if he was real, just as little Janis had asked him to, only he has carried it on long after she stopped carrying him everywhere and referred to him as “just a stuffed toy” (only ever in Regina’s presence, it occurs to her). She won’t admit it, but she loves him for doing that.

“Yeah,” she says, swinging her legs over her bed and standing up. Almost as soon as her feet hit the ground, she feels her knees buckling as black spots dance in front of her eyes and the air rushes out of her lungs. Her dad grabs her as she falls and helps her settle back on the bed until the world turns right again.

“Janis? Janis are you all right?” he asks.

“Fine,” she says. “Just dizzy.”

“I think you’re hungry,” he guesses. “You didn’t eat dinner last night. Will you take food if I make it?” She nods for his sake, although she feels her throat tighten at the mere mention of food. “C’est ma fille.”

She half-walks, half-stumbles to the living room, her dad behind her with her blankets and the bucket, despite her telling him she can take it. He tucks the blanket around her when she curls up on one corner of the sofa, the remote already in one hand. She doesn’t want to watch TV, she thinks as she watches her dad go to the kitchen, but all the past times she’s been sick, she’s camped out on the sofa in front of cartoons or an old movie or daytime television. It’s what her dad expects of her, and she wants to be as normal as she can for him.

Normal. The word rolls around her mind as some cowboy movie plays out on the TV. She doesn’t want to blend in entirely, not even with her friends, but she doesn’t want to stray too far from ‘normal’. Normal is safe. It doesn’t have awkward conversations or get slurs scribbled on your locker. It doesn’t get strange looks or asked uncomfortable questions.

It’s not that her parents are homophobic or anything. Her aunt is bi for God’s sake, and while her grandparents have taken a while to catch up to the 21st century, her mom and dad have been nothing but supportive of her. Janis even went with them to the Pride parades in New York with her aunt last year, losing herself in the sea of rainbows and pride flags, of open displays of affection between girls, in the storm of glitter and confetti. Janis had become Dorothy; swept up from her own black and white world into a technicolour wonderland, the only difference she never wanted to leave.

She knows deep down her parents won’t mind, but the necessary conversation looms over her like a wall she has to scale on her own. And as her dad brings in some oatmeal, sprinkled with cinnamon and a bottle of honey so she can decide for herself how much she wants, pats her head and comments on the movie she has on, she realises she doesn’t want either of them to look at her differently than they do now, for better or worse.

She decides to go into school the next day. She can’t hide in her house forever and in her heart, there’s a small glimmer of hope that she can fix this, just like she has fixed fights with her friends before. Being friends with Regina George is somewhat like owning an incredibly temperamental dog. She needs a gentle hand and reasonable head and somehow, that has become her, because while she likes them, Gretchen doesn’t have the spine and Karen doesn’t have the brains. Although the catch is, while she and Regina have had disagreements, they’ve never fought like this before; she’s mostly settling fights between Gretchen and Regina, or Karen and Regina, or once in a blue moon; Karen and Gretchen. Sometimes for girls she isn’t even friends with. But never between herself and Regina.

She marches into homeroom with more confidence in her stride than she feels in her spirit, staring ahead, her footsteps echoing off the wooden floor in the silent room, which funnily enough been buzzing with sound when she had been standing outside it. She approaches Regina in the same manner, ignoring her pounding heart and puffing her chest out.

“Hi, Regina,” she says, her voice a little too loud. She turns around, tossing her golden curls over her shoulder.

“Oh, Janis,” she says casually. “Feeling better?” She leans back on the desk she sits on, pushing out her chest and lifting her chin up.

“Yeah,” she says. “And I was hoping we could talk about the other day.”

“Sure.” She stands up, brushing imaginary dust off her white jeans. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Alone,” she adds.

“Janis,” Regina says. “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say to our friends.” Our friends, and half the class, whose eyes have all turned to them, the event of the year.

“Take a picture it’ll last longer,” Janis snaps at them without thinking. She’s shocked at herself, but when all but a select few of the heads turn away from her, she finds herself smirking, the buzzing in her veins beginning to calm, if only slightly.

“Damn,” Regina says. “Why are you so touchy? Is this over the lesbian thing?”

“No,” she says, fighting the urge to flinch. “Well kind of. Regina, why did you ask me that?”

“Why didn’t you give me an answer?” she replies, shrugging. “It’s a yes or no question.”

“Because it-because you asked out of the blue!” she answers. “And it’s none of your business.”

“So you are a lesbian?”

“No.” That part of her mind immediately replies _yes_ to which she says _shut it!_

“That took a while,” Regina states, her lips curling into a wicked grin. “Maybe you should think about it a bit more before we talk.” She places her hand on her shoulder. If that’s meant to be comforting, it’s not working. Especially with her nails digging into Janis’ shoulder like miniature Roman spears. “And work on your anger, Janis. It’s never been a good look for you.” As if to prove her point, she touches her finger to Janis’ cheek and winces. She just now feels the heat spreading across her cheek and her chest tightening and does what she’s been doing since the other day; runs. But not before shoving Regina harshly in the chest and a ripple of giggles runs throughout the classroom.

Outside, she finds she can breathe again, taking deep breaths in and out, remembering reading somewhere that that’s meant to be good for calming down, but it’s not working out well for her. She presses her hand to her chest, moaning slightly at the discomfort. Her vision gets darker and blurs slightly and she promises herself that if she passes out, she’s begging her mom to let her transfer schools.

“Are you okay?” she hears someone ask over the ringing in her head.

“No,” she replies, all her walls and pride stripped away.

“Okay, okay, um,” her unknown saviour says. “Should I get a teacher?” She shakes her head frantically. The last thing she needs is the staff getting involved, then maybe her parents too. “Okay, here… Can I touch you? Would that be okay?” She swallows thickly and nods, her words failing her. “Okay, cool.” She feels a hand on her shoulder, squeezing just the right amount to reassure her. “Just breathe, okay?”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not really,” her companion says, chuckling lightly. “Like me, just copy me, okay?” She nods, no time to argue. “In for eight, out for eight.” It takes a while, longer than she cares to admit thanks to her racing heart, but she manages to settle into the rhythm, her whole body being soothed, feeling like she’s coming down to Earth after being shot-rather violently-into the atmosphere.

When her vision comes back into focus, she’s surprised to see Damian Hubbard is the one holding her shoulder, offering her a gentle smile.

“Thanks,” she says, her voice quiet. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes I did,” he answers, as though it’s nothing. “Are you okay to go back in there?” Janis turns her head to the door, only to immediately find her chin wobbling and her stomach turning.

“Not really,” she confesses.

“Oh,” he says. “Are you into Pokémon? Want to see my cards?”

“Yeah,” she answers, a smile tugging on her lips as Damian sits cross legged in front of her and pulls the cards out of his bag, all held together in one shiny plastic folder. He lets her look at all of them, telling her where and how he got them, filling her in on the ones she doesn’t know so well. Despite her having been friends with Regina longer, she doesn’t think she’s laughed half as much with her as she did with Damian.

Despite her small escape with Damian that one morning, school only gets worse and worse. Damian is only in one of her classes and sits on the opposite side of the room than her, so she’s alone. Barely anyone so much as glances in her direction and when she asks someone for a spare eraser, they toss it at her without even looking at her before pulling their pencil case to the other side of the desk. It’s like a series of bullets hitting Janis again and again, breaking through her skin and making her bleed. She has never been desperate before, but she is now. She’s desperate for a way to make feeling that something away at her chest every time someone walks past her stop. She’s desperate to make her heart stop beating so quickly and loudly when she wakes up. She’s desperate to stop being afraid, constantly walking on the edge, an invisible knife in her hand, preparing herself for another attack.

She lets herself retreat into one corner of her mind, forming a thick outer skin of sorts to defend herself. She soon finds that she is barely registering her surroundings, stumbling into people and walls without so much as a mumble of an apology. For those six hours of the day, every day for the rest of the week, everything except the most basic functions shuts down, and she just exists. She doesn’t feel, she barely registers sounds and she certainly doesn’t acknowledge her fellow classmates. Not even Damian. Her limbs feel heavy, if she ever feels them at all, she drags herself from class to class, the words of her classmates bouncing harmlessly and meaninglessly off an invisible wall she’s allowed to grow up around her. That week blends into the next, which blends into the next, which blends into the next, until the days become uncountable and incomprehensible. As far as she’s aware, she goes to school, then for two days she doesn’t, then she does again.

It’s far from an ideal existence, especially since she doesn’t seem to have the ability to turn it on and off at will, meaning that when she gets home, her apparent grey cloud comes with her and she sloughs through the house without a word, which worries her parents deeply.

“Janis?” her mom asks as she pushes pasta around her plate, her energy so drained that she can’t even lift it to her mouth. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” she says flatly, forcing the word out of her mouth. “Tired.”

“Janis,” her dad begins. “At school…. Is everything okay?” Janis rolls her lips into a thin line, feeling a lump form in her throat. One little word sits between her normal, if painful, existence with her parents and an entire floodgate of emotions she doesn’t want to deal with or even fully understand. She opens her mouth, small, pained sounds forcing their way out involuntarily as she tries to think of something to say, anything at all.

“Janis,” her mom says again, softer this time. She reaches across the table and covers Janis’ hand with her own. “Janis, please.”

“I-I can’t, it’s fine, I-” She stammers as treacherous little tears leak out of her eyes and down her face. She presses her hands to her mouth, forcing the words down her throat. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” her mom asks gently.

_Because you’re not ready. Because I’m not ready._

She chokes on her words, her shoulders shaking as more tears flow down her cheeks, seemingly unstoppable now. In all her life, she doesn’t remember the world feeling so big and her feeling so small and locked away from everyone else, like a museum display stuck behind a glass cabinet for people to point and laugh at or ignore completely. She’s not sure which is worse.

“No one… no one talks to me anymore,” she manages to explain. “They won’t even look at me. I’m invisible.”

“Janis…” her dad sighs, petting her hair. “Janis I’m so sorry.”

“Karen and Gretchen won’t go near me now,” she goes on. She’s like a punctured tyre-everything that she’s been holding inside slowly comes out. At the very least, it makes her feel a tiny bit better. “And Regina… Regina-” She can’t bring herself to talk about Regina, how cold her eyes are in the rare moments she looks at her, how she wrinkles her nose in disgust at her, how she somehow knows to turn away from Janis just when hope has begun to sprout back up in her chest.

“Jan,” her mom whispers, sharing a nervous glance with her dad. “Did Regina write… that word on your locker?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe. I don’t know.” She wants to say that not even Regina could be that cruel, but that’s a redundant statement. “I don’t want to go back to school.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” her mom says, stroking her back and kissing her head. “Take the next few days off. Then we can work something out.” Janis nods, sagging into her parents’ embrace. She can feel the concerned glances they exchange over her head and she feels a pang of guilt for it; they should be enjoying their evening and planning to down some fancy wine later tonight, instead they’re stroking a crying 12 year old’s hair and letting her tears wet their tops.

She sleeps fitfully that night, memories of the past week flashing up behind her eyes as soon as she closes them. She kicks the covers off, her arms and legs buzzing again as she stares up at the ceiling, her eyes itching with tiredness but her body too worked up to sleep. She runs her fingers through her hair, tugging on it harshly until it feels like her scalp is going to come off with it. In the low light of her bedroom lamp, she can see the blonde of her hair, and for the first time since she dyed it blonde, she hates it. She doesn’t just mildly dislike it, doesn’t just find it annoying or regret it. She hates it. Pure, unfiltered rage and hate that doesn’t fade away when her body finally gives in and lets her sleep.

She wakes up later than usual, her mother already gone to work and the light on in her father’s office. She sits up, the combination of four hours of sleep and an unusual amount of rage a painful one. She stares up at the ceiling, the images of that day at school attacking her over and over again, making her hands shake and her heart race and her breathing come in short, painful gasps.

When she stumbles into the bathroom, she grasps the edge of the sink, her legs not promising to hold her steady. When her eyes meet her own in the reflection, she barely recognises herself. Her eyes are red-rimmed, the skin around them blotchy, but her face is pale. Her shirt hangs off her, rather than fitting squarely on her shoulders with little effort as usual. Her lips seem red and swollen, likely due to the fact she’s bitten them when she hasn’t been chewing her nails. Her dyed blonde hair hands limply around her shoulders and down her back.

She’s never really hated her reflection before. But there are first times for everything.

She pushes her hair away from her face and her fingers catch in the knots. She winces as she wriggles her hand out of her hair, little shots of pain attacking her scalp and fading in less than a moment. She shakes her head out, detesting the blur of blonde that flies around her.

She hates it. When her mum first took her to get her hair dyed, she had asked again and again if she was sure she wanted this, but Janis had assured her she wouldn’t regret it.

Colour her shocked, she was wrong. She has bad judgment, in hair colour, in friends, you name it, apparently.

She grabs the ends and yanks hard, curling it around her fist, half hoping it might just come right off. She pulls until there’s tears in her eyes and her cheeks are red, only stopping because she doesn’t want her dad to hear her.

That’s when something gleams in one of the plastic containers on the wall and catches her attention; a pair of stainless steel scissors poking out of the top one. Beckoned like sleeping beauty to the spinning wheel, she creeps over to it and stretches up on her toes until her fingers wrap around the handle. She looks back at herself in the mirror and back at the scissors, opening and closing them. They’d cut through the heavy blonde locks no problem.

If there was any logic in her brain, it’s gone quickly as she holds the scissors up and open, her other hand holding her hair in place, just above her jaw. Her hand shakes as she brings the scissors up to her hair. The rest of the house blinks out of existence; she stands alone in this bathroom and the bathroom stands alone in a vast empty universe. Her actions don’t matter to anyone except her.

The scissors close around her hair, just underneath her fingers, and the blonde locks fall to the floor. Once that’s done, she doesn’t even feel her arms move, just watches herself in the mirror as her arm makes its way around her head, the scissors opening and closing in time to the steady rise and fall of her chest. With every snip, she finds breathing far easier. Even as her hair falls down the back of her t shirt and wedges in her bra, prickling and poking at her back, she doesn’t mind. She barely feels it.

When she’s finished, she lets the scissors fall and clatter into the sink, her arms falling limply beside her, feeling like she’s just put down a heavy weight.

“Janis-” The door swings open as her father enters. She turns her head to look at him, her teeth peeking out to chew her bottom lip. Her dad’s mouth opens and closes like a goldfish. “You look nice. Are you going to keep it this short?”

“No.” She shakes her head, turning her attention back to the mirror. Gone is the princess-like cascading golden wave, now she has a rough-looking choppy bob, the front part already beginning to curl. It’s not perfect, not the way she was before, but an odd feeling in her gut tells her she might like this more. She runs her hand through it. “I’m going to grow it out. Black this time.”

“Okay.” In her reflection, her dad comes behind her, smiling and trying his best to make it open and honest and real, and he toys with the edges of her hair. “You did it yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“It looks great,” he says. “Vous êtes belle.” She smiles weakly, leaning slightly into him, taking the weight off her still-shaky legs. A lump forms in her throat, a tear leaking out of her eye, then another, and another and soon her shoulders are shaking and she’s gasping for air. “Oh, Janis.” Her dad wraps his arms around her tightly, squeezing her shoulders as if to protect her from anyone who could come near her. When she was really little, she used to think her dad’s hugs could fix any problem, a scraped knee, a dirty teddy, anything. Now she knows better but she wishes she didn’t. “Let’s get some food in you, mon cherie.”

She spends the next days in her room, only coming down for meals. Her moods alternate between feeling nothing or feeling pure anger. Blue numbness or red rage. Lying star fished on her bed looking up at the ceiling or pacing her room and chewing her nails down to the wick. They alternate so rapidly without warning or build up that it leaves Janis out of breath.

She lays on the floor on her stomach, watching the small bits of dust rolling past her eyes on the carpet, listening to her heartbeat echoed on the wooden floor. Her parents move around downstairs, the Saturday morning sun hitting her closed curtains. She lifts her middle finger and lowers it slowly, finding some kind of comfort, at least physically, in being so still. She feels her chest moving against the floor steadily and listens to the air coming in and out of her mouth.

She moves her eye just a bit of a fraction of an inch and notices something on her wall. A large white poster board covered in glitter and pink paint and cut outs from glossy brochures and careful calligraphy in black ballpoint pen and photographs of her and the people who used to mean the world to her.

It takes more effort than it should, but she pulls herself up onto her knees, running her heavy arm through her newly-cut hair. She keeps looking at the collage, sitting in pride of place on her wall. Karen had called it the ‘college collage’ amongst a fit of giggles when she first saw it. A small smile tugs on Janis’ mouth as she remembers it, but it’s for barely a second. Then her hands begin to shake as her mood takes a sudden sharp left turn. Her mouth feels like it’s filled with poison, a bitter taste stinging her tongue.

She pulls the collage from the wall, looking at the pictures of her former friends. Regina posing with her hand on her hip and an easy grin on her face. She wonders if it’s hindsight or she’s just seeing things, but that grin looks so cruel, so sly now. When she showed Regina the collage, she had commented on how much she hated that picture of her, but then told Janis how cute it was. How they’d all be best friends forever.

Did she mean it then or was that just a lie? Maybe all Janis was was a game to her, a joke; she was just seeing how long she could string Janis along and pretend to like her. Maybe it was that from the first day they met.

A guttural scream tears through the silence of her bedroom as she begins tearing pieces of paper and pictures off the collage. She kicks the poster board in her slippers, tugs at it and pulls it to try to get it to rip in half. She throws it onto the ground and jumps on it, her screaming the soundtrack to her attempted destruction. She lifts the scissors from her art desk and begins cutting it, making jagged lines like lightening in the board, cutting off corners, tearing through the middle, cutting it in half again and again, making it as small as possible. She slices through Regina’s picture, severing her glossy head and for a moment, it feels good. She chops through her face, tearing one of her eyes in half. She tears off the catwalk she had used for Regina’s future modelling career and cuts it into tiny pieces of dark blue confetti. She doesn’t stop there, cutting Karen in half, snipping away most of Gretchen’s body. Tears land on the poster board as she goes, burning her eyes, blurring her vision, and her throat closes up again to the point where she feels she can only get tiny slivers of air in and out of her lungs.

She sits back and pulls her knees into her chest as tears begin drying on her cheeks only to be replaced with new ones. She hates every part of herself right now; her body, her tears, her anger, her brain, her heart. Her stupid heart that doesn’t do what everyone else wants it to. Her stupid brain that doesn’t let her act the way everyone else does. She wishes she could just disappear. Or better yet-

She crawls over to her bed, where her backpack lays discarded on the floor, and pulls out her sketchbook and pencils. She turns them over in her hand, smiling at how familiar they feel. They’re the only alive things in the room right now, already chasing away the grey hue she sees herself painted in. She shifts so that her back is against her bed and begins drawing. The outline of a girl with an unfamiliar face and uncoloured hair and blank eyes. It could be anyone. She leaves out the top of the girl’s head and draws a small door right over where her heart is, open on its metal hinges. Arrows heading towards her head and chest, sprouting from a different, new, shiny brain and heart. Her original ones lay discarded on the behind her, sagging and forgotten. She takes out her colouring pencils and fills it all in, one bit at a time; black hair, green eyes (after some consideration), brown skin. The new brain is pink, the new heart deep red, just like the ones on the posters in the wall of her science room. Normal, functioning, conforming.

She colours the discarded brain carefully with the brightest colours she can find, no rhyme or reasons. Rather than strict stripes, she opts for swirls of green, pink circles, yellow stars, purple zigzags. When it comes to colour the heart, she is halfway through before she even realises what she’s doing. Richard Of York Gave is already carefully filled in, now all that’s left to complete the acronym is Battle In Vain.

If nothing else, it’s appropriate. Janis Of Chicago Gave Battle In Vain for longer than she wants to admit.

A knock at the door makes her pull her work in progress towards her chest. Her art time is never to be interrupted, that’s the deal and everyone knows it, but especially not now.

“Go away,” she sighs, her trembling hand reaching for the blue pencil, hoping it can steady her. “I don’t want to talk to anyone.” She carefully turns the page and begins drawing circles on the next one as her chest begins to get tighter. The pencil moves around and around and she stares at it intensely. Maybe it can take her away from here.

“Not even me?” At the sound of that voice, she drops the pencil, letting it roll under the desk. There’s only one person who could even come close to calming Janis the way her art can.

She gets up and runs to the door, turning the handle while anxiously biting her lip.

“Aunt Veronica?” The woman herself stands on the other side of Janis’ door, her brown hair hanging loosely around her shoulders, wearing a blue cardigan and a pair of black skinny jeans.

“Hi, kid,” she says, and for the first time, Janis doesn’t feel alone. She wraps her arms around her aunt’s waist and buries herself in her chest. Veronica hugs her back just as tightly, pushing Janis’ broken pieces into a big pile that might just be mendable.

“What are you doing here?” Janis asks as Veronica closes the door, making it the two of them in Janis’ own space.

“Your mom told me what’s been going on at school,” she explains. “So I sped down the highway to come and see you.”

“You came all the way from New York?” she asks.

“Of course. Can’t have my favourite niece stuck home alone at a time like this.” She strokes Janis’ newly short hair, smiling as she ruffles the edges. “Loving the haircut, by the way.” Janis smiles and rakes a hand through it. “Your dad said you did it by yourself.”

“Impulse decision,” she admits.

“It looks great,” she says. She peaks behind Janis at her almost-complete drawing. “Working on something new?”

“Yeah,” she admits, picking it up, her back turned to her aunt. “It’s nothing important.” She discards it on her bed, face down. Maybe she’ll fix it up later. “So what did mom tell you?”

“A lot,” she says. “She told me what she knows, which I’m guessing is only 50 per cent of the story.”

“Ten per cent,” she corrects quietly.

“And that you haven’t gone to school in a while,” she continues gently. Janis doesn’t correct her. “And that it was about your friend Regina.”

“I’m not sure I’d call her friend,” Janis admits, her voice shaking. “Not anymore.”

“Well… never liked her anyway.” For her aunt’s sake, Janis lets out a laugh. “Here’s my idea; we go out.”

“Go out?” Janis echoes.

“Yeah. Get you out of this house.” Janis isn’t so sure despite her aunt’s optimistic tone. These four walls might be the only thing keeping her from losing her sanity entirely. Or all the days spent inside could have turned her into a vampire. Either way, for all she knows she might step outside and burst into flames. “We can go anywhere you want. Get ice cream, go to that nice little art shop you like, catch a movie.”

Damn it. Janis is in dire need of some new paints. And maybe it’ll make the time pass faster until she can go to bed again.

And who knows when she’ll see Aunt Veronica next?

Within two minutes Janis has a green jacket with an army patch on and two months’ worth of allowance in her pockets and is bouncing down the stairs while Veronica tells her parents where they’re going and when they’ll be back. As Janis pauses on the last step, she hears Veronica promising her parents that she’ll get some food into her.

When they step out of Veronica’s car, the first place they go is the ice cream shop. Janis takes out her purse, but Veronica stops her with a shake of her head, tapping her nose with her credit card. She pushes Janis to get whatever she wants, not allowing her to get the small ice cream cone she had been planning on getting. She ends up ordering a hot fudge sundae with white chocolate sprinkles while Veronica gets a strawberry sundae and a latte.

“Sure you don’t want a drink, Jan?” she asks. “I can pay.” Janis lets her eyes wander over to the counter, landing on the bright slushie machine, the blue and red mixtures turning in their respective containers.

“I wouldn’t mind a slushie,” she says delicately. Veronica nods, handing her a ten.

“You can go up and get it,” she suggests. “Knowing me I’d order the wrong one. Keep the change.”

“You’re the best, Aunt Veronica,” she says, no irony or sarcasm anywhere.

Soon enough they’re strolling through the stores on the high street, a large slushie turning Janis’ tongue blue. They look at window displays, despite their vastly different fashion senses. Veronica is drawn to the blazers and short skirts, while Janis can’t stop herself from looking at the dark t-shirts, fishnet tights and leather jackets on display in a store she must have passed so many times but has never noticed. Veronica ushers her inside and follows Janis around as her hands pick up and prod at everything on the railings, her face lighting up at the printed t-shirts, dark patterned skirts, translucent tights with intricate designs, oversized coats and jackets made of some heavy material and in dark blues and deep, almost blood red and army greens. Never before have her plain yellow t shirt and blue jeans felt less comfortable.

“See anything you like?” Veronica asks, creeping up behind her.

“I like everything,” she says, turning over a label. “Especially those prices!”

“Not a bad deal,” Veronica agrees.

“And it’s two for one,” a red headed sales girl says. Probably a few years older than Janis herself, and impossibly cute with glasses and freckles. “On all the printed t shirts.” She doesn’t need to say anything else; Janis already has her purse out.

“Hey, I can buy them for you,” Veronica says. “Save your money for a rainy day.”

“No,” Janis protests. “Thanks, Aunt V, but… I need to buy them for myself.” And besides, it’s been storming like a bitch these past weeks.

Soon Janis and Veronica are stepping outside again, a white plastic bag containing two t shirts (and a choker she bought at the counter) swinging against Janis’ leg. In seemingly no time there’s new paints in there with it, purchased at Janis’ favourite art store. Veronica is only slightly surprised to see that the store clerks know Janis by name. They stop for lunch at the burger shack, Veronica eyeing Janis carefully as she picks at her veggie burger.

“I know you promised my mom I’d eat,” she says, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Your parents are just worried,” she says. Janis nods, looking down at the half eaten burger. She eats more than she did at home, so that has to count for something. She picks up a sweet potato fry, smothers it in sauce and pops it in her mouth. Normally she loves veggie burgers with sweet potato fries but now it tastes like slightly tasty mush. Which is actually a step up, given that her mother’s cooking and anything she tried to eat at home just tasted like normal mush. “A lot of us are.”

“Can we not do this right now?” Janis asks. “Sorry, but can we just go shopping and stuff and not talk about my stupid feelings?”

“Your feelings aren’t stupid, Janis,” Veronica tells her sternly. “But okay. Sure. Want to go see a movie?”

“Sure.”

They end up seeing Frankenweenie, because when can Janis say no to any movie featuring a dog and one that’s spooky? Most of all, she escapes into that black and white world built by Tim Burton and lets fiction replace reality for a while. Her hand itches to draw, to recapture the film on paper and she promises herself she will.

After the movie, the sun has finally chased the clouds away, and Veronica decides to end their day out with a picnic in the park before she has to deliver Janis home. She buys bread rolls, candy, fizzy drinks and chips and lets Janis pick a spot in the park; on top of one of the hills, looking over into the kid’s playpark. Janis puts salt and vinegar chips into a bread rolls and eats it, followed by a chocolate bar and a handful of gummy worms. It somehow only now dawns on her that eating one meal per day for over two weeks actually leaves her feeling hungry. Who knew?

She sits cross legged and looks out at the park, kids running up the slide and pushing the roundabout without anyone on it. She presses her thumb into her hand. They don’t conform and they don’t care. She thinks that she’d give anything to be able to do that and then realises maybe she can.

“Jan?” Veronica asks softly, putting her hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

Janis looks down and shakes her head. Despite how she might feel right now, in this moment, she knows she won’t be okay when she goes to bed tonight. And she might not be okay for a long, long time.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. “You don’t have to.” Janis wriggles closer to her, leaning on her shoulder. Veronica’s arm comes around her shoulders and hugs her tightly.

“Regina asked… she asked me if I was a lesbian,” she admits, her voice cracking, her tongue like sandpaper. Her heart feels impossibly small; she imagines it beating weakly and sitting alone in the cavern of her chest. “She said she can’t invite me to her pool party because she thinks I’m a lesbian. Like that would even matter.”

“She said what?” Veronica asks. “Jesus what a little… Oh my god!” Janis giggles at her aunt’s desperate attempts not to swear. A+ for effort, she guesses. “Janis… I’m so sorry. That’s awful. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Janis swallows past the lump in her throat. Despite Veronica’s arm around her, she feels a sudden fear that she’ll use that arm to push her down this hill. Veronica is her safest space, in this moment and any other one, and yet her hands are still shaking, her heart pounding. Because once she says it, it’s out there, and it’s known forever. Branded on her skin. Maybe not for everyone to see, but for one person to see, and despite logic dictating to her that her Aunt Veronica would never betray her, she’s scared of what Veronica might do. After all, she never thought Regina that cruel either until a month ago.

But she thinks there might be one thing worse than everyone knowing and that’s no one ever knowing. Condemning herself to lying to everyone she knows. Not to mention lying to herself.

“I am one though.”

“One what?”

“A lesbian.” Her voice is barely a whisper, but she feels like she just screamed it out of the top of her lungs.

“Oh,” is all Veronica says, her hand freezing where it had been petting Janis’ hair. “Okay. Okay… that’s cool.”

“It is?”

“Yeah hon, it is.” Veronica kisses the top of her head. “So can I ask… how long have you known?”

“Good question,” she replies, pulling at the lace of her sneaker, slowly pulling it out altogether and wrapping it around her finger. “Um, I guess for a few months. A year, maybe? Is that long enough?”

“Of course it’s long enough,” she says firmly. “If you know, you know. Doesn’t matter how long or how short it takes.” Janis lets out a long steady breath, nodding.

“Just… keep it a secret from my mom and dad for now. Please, I don’t think they’re ready to know yet.”

“Of course. You come out on your own time, to who you want and when you want.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly. Despite the calm of the evening, the lightness in her chest as her aunt holds her and assures her everything is already, there is still a grey cloud looming over her. Or a blonde one. “I don’t know how Regina knew. I don’t know if she knew at all or if she was just doing it to be mean. You know how some people do that? How they call people gay just to be bitchy?”

“All too well, kid.”

“Yeah. That. I don’t know if she actually thinks I’m a lesbian or if she was just being a bitch or if she was ever really my friend to begin with. But it doesn’t matter now. Everyone at school knows now.”

“Janis, I’m so sorry,” she sighs. “School can be hell. Especially with girls.”

“You’d know? How?”

“I’ve had experience,” she says cryptically. She holds Janis tighter, rubbing her hand up and down her arm, letting her hear everything she needs to hear without even saying a word. Janis thinks of herself as tough, but she curls into her aunt’s arms and stays there, only moving to get more food. Veronica wipes her tears and runs her hand through her short hair, asks her about her art and listens to her venting her frustrations and fears until it’s all out there, not just holed up rent free in her brain. She doesn’t offer solutions and Janis doesn’t blame her, but she listens and understands and Janis doesn’t feel alone any more. Finally, just before they get up to leave, she cracks a real smile.

That night, Janis finds it hard to sleep. The sadness and anxiety that has plagued her for a month springs to life the minute she is alone, but the sugar fest is not helping much. After her stomach cramps painfully for the third time, she gives in and heads to the bathroom, and then down to the kitchen for a glass of water. Or five. And maybe a fruit salad too.

The kitchen light is still on when she goes down, and the sounds of wine being poured and adult voices are unmistakable. Janis presses herself against the wall, clad in her pyjamas and fuzzy white socks, unsure if she should enter despite the fact that she lives there. Then she hears her name and her ears prick up and her heart falls to the floor.

“I just think Janis has been through so much with that girl,” she hears her Aunt Veronica explain. “And like you said, she wasn’t eating, she wasn’t talking to anyone. Maybe seeing a therapist might be a good option. I mean, you know how much the therapy helped me.”

“You mean, after your boyfriend died?” she hears her mom ask. “And your other friends-”

“Yeah, that,” she says hurriedly. “Just think about it, okay? It might be good for her. And there’s also-”

“The private schooling?” her mom finishes.

“What private school?” her dad asks.

“Veronica was telling me about it on the phone.”

“It’s a very nice private school in New York,” she hears Aunt Veronica explaining and Janis puts two and two together in an instant. “Very highly regarded, and it’s known for its art department. Try and tell me she wouldn’t love it there.”

“It does sound like her kind of place,” her dad agrees.

“They offer the option to board, but if not she can come live with me.” Part of Janis does think ‘hell yes’ at the thought of living with her Aunt Veronica. And maybe up in New York wouldn’t be so bad either. They could go to Broadway every night, see the Statue of Liberty, eat pizza and donuts for every meal.

“Don’t those places cost thousands?” her mom asks. “How much does a social worker really pay, Ronnie?”

“There is also the other option,” she hears her dad interrupt. “We could send her to France.”

“France?” Veronica asks. “No offense, Alex, but isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“Well, it was something we had been discussing when this all started,” her mom confesses. “Alex has been looking at this French boarding school. A lot of his nieces and nephews went there.”

“She wouldn’t be on her own,” her dad adds. “Many of her cousins still go there now. Her cousins Gabrielle and Celeste would be in the year below her if she went in September. And she could go to my mother’s house and see her aunts and uncles as often as she’d like. A whole new start.”

“Well when you put it like that,” Veronica admits.

_Yeah when you put it like that it sounds insane_ she thinks.

“I am not going to a French boarding school!” she says out loud. The hears the scraping of chairs in the kitchen and lets out a sigh. “Fuck!”

She steps into the kitchen, pulling one of her sleeves over her hand while the three adults look at her.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“Yes you were,” her mother corrects her, but her tone is fond and there’s a small smile on her face.

“Well I didn’t intend to,” she says. “Just wanted some water.” Her dad gestures to the fridge and she creeps over, filling a glass with ice before going to the sink, the water rushing into the glass and filling the tense silence. “I’m not going to a French boarding school.” She turns to face them, clutching the glass with both hands. “No offence, Dad. You know I love France and everyone there, but I want to stay in America, at least. France is way too far away.”

“Of course, _Janice_,” he says, using the French pronunciation of her name that her extended family all use.

“Well… what about New York, then?” Veronica says, playing with the bottom of her wine glass.

“I… New York might not be entirely off the table,” she admits. She takes a long drink of water as the future comes into focus in front of her, scarily close and all too real. “I mean… I mean I’d need to think about it.”

“There’s no rush, Janis,” her mom says, her hand curling into a stiff fist on the table. “Janis… I don’t know if you heard, but we had been discussing the possibility of maybe you seeing a therapist?”

Janis looks down at the floor and at her fluffy white socks. The word therapist holds way too many meanings for her; images of cold dark rooms and faceless men in black suits. Even more disturbing images of injections and steel chairs flash up and her hands begins to shake. She shakes her head, trying to banish those images from her mind, knowing how crazy she’s being. Maybe if Aunt Veronica went to therapy, and she turned out to the most badass person Janis has ever seen, maybe she should try following in her footsteps. If a therapist can make her feel the way she did today in the park, then it has to be worth a try.

“Yeah,” she says, her throat tight. “Yeah, okay.”

She doesn’t go back to school. It’s an unspoken arrangement, but the next day her parents are on the phone with her school and looking up alternatives. And making her pancakes with as much maple syrup and blueberries as she wants. She wonders how long this will all last, and despite her love for pancakes, she hopes it all goes back to normal soon.

The next week, she has her first therapy session. Her mom says she’s allowed-in fact, encouraged-to bring her art things with her, and they sit in the white backpack patterned with red roses she used to use for school. As her bitten down nails scratch at it, she realises she really hates this bag. And that Regina was there when she bought it.

“Are you nervous?” her mom asks quietly. Janis takes a deep breath in and shakes her head. “I’ll see you in an hour. And then maybe we can go out somewhere? Get a milkshake or something?”

“Sure,” she says, half paying attention. “Yeah that would be fun.” She drums her heels against the car seat, her hand shaking as she opens the door. “Janis-” She turns back to her mom, who wraps her hand around hers. “I’m proud of you. You know for coming out here, for going to get help-”

“Ok, thanks,” she says, jumping out of the car and closing the door, sealing her mother’s comforting but painful words away from her. She wipes her hand on her jeans, her heart beating so rapidly she’s worried about passing out as she forces her weak legs to move and to walk into the building. She supposes she’s come this far; she might as well see this through. She just hopes she can see it through without puking on anyone.

An hour later, Janis runs out to her mom’s car, much to her mom’s surprise. She’s playing a card game on her phone when the passenger door opens, jumping at the sudden noise.

“Hey baby,” she greets as she climbs into the passenger seat. “How was it?”

“It was… Better than I thought.” It was the complete opposite of what Janis had expected.; her images of blank, unfeeling faces replaced by a pretty woman with blonde hair and red glasses, a bright laugh and a gentle voice, the idea of a cold dark room with no windows replaced by a carpeted office with a bowl of candy and sunlight coming in through the window.

It doesn’t fix everything in one go. She never thought it would, even though that’s what she had been hoping for. It crosses her mind to ask her Aunt Veronica what she thinks, how long it took her to feel okay after whatever it was that happened to her. But she feels the same way she did that day in the park with Veronica and more importantly, she feels and she laughs and she begins to want to do things, and that’s all she wants right now.

“Also, we found a good tutor for you,” her mom tells her. “She can come around to the house if you want her to. You two can take your dad’s study. You’d just do Math and English together. Only on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Just to get you ready to go back to school.” Whenever that is, is what her mom doesn’t say. The word if creeps into Janis’ mind and stays there. If she ever goes back.

“Yeah,” she says, pressing her palms together. “Yeah that sounds good.”

“Your dad is very much willing to keep practicing French with you,” her mom goes on. “He’s even been dusting off all his old French kid’s books to give to you to keep up your vocab.”

“Oh, shit,” Janis mutters, making her mom laugh. She snickers as they pull out of the parking lot, looking out of the window. Her fingers itch to draw, her art things lying dormant in her bag, and an idea sparks in her mind.

When she gets home, she runs up to her room and pulls out one of her pictures out from under her bed. The one she drew that day Veronica came over; the girl swapping her rainbow coloured heart and patterned mind for plain pink and red ones. Ones that look and feel like everyone else. As she puts it in her bag for next week, she wonders if she’ll tell her therapist or if she will work it out for herself. The latter thought makes her stomach sick. It wouldn’t be her fault, or anyone’s fault, if they were to work it out for herself or have an inkling, but it’s Janis’ secret. Her story to tell, in her own time.

Or it was. And maybe, in one part of her life, it still can be.

Over Christmas, they go to New York. Her parents get a hotel room, but Janis and Veronica manage to convince them to let her sleep in the guest room of Veronica’s small apartment. Each time she wakes up, one of Veronica’s two cats-Muffins and Popeye-are sitting next to her, purring right in her face and pushing their way into her arms, demanding to be cuddled. Janis decided a while ago that the dogs vs cats debate is pointless and that both animals are equally wonderful (and that the superior pets are tortoises) but when Popeye rubs his head against her shoulder in the early hours of Christmas morning, she thinks that cats do have an undeniably magical force about them. They have to if Veronica hugs them and tells them that she loves them both “so, so, so much” not five minutes after she condemned Muffins to Hell for eating her bagel.

On Boxing Day, her parents insist on cooking dinner, despite her dad warily eyeing Veronica’s tiny oven. They’re in the kitchen for hours attempting to recreate her grandma’s Boxing Day pie, which Veronica keeps insisting cannot be recreated and the only person who could possibly make it is in Sherwood, Ohio.

Janis sits on the couch, pushing holding her new shoelaces up against the pair of black Doc Martens Santa had given her. When she pulled open the wrapping paper, silence had fallen over the room for a good thirty seconds. Janis hasn’t been in love before but she’s pretty sure she is now, especially with the array of laces she was also given to try out. Aside from the boots, Santa gave her fishnet tights, graphic t-shirts in blacks and purples, studded navy, black and dark green shorts, a purple skirt with blue roses she has decided she will get married in. Veronica got her a green army style jacket and a bunch of patches she claims were going cheap. Even her grandma got her a couple of green, blue and black patterned tank tops and a dark red skirt. To top it all off, she finds some black and silver bracelets in her stocking, which according to Veronica were from Muffins and Popeye.

Her friends-ex-friends- wouldn’t be caught dead in that kind of stuff but gives her the biggest smile she’s had for weeks. When she holds them up in the mirror against her body, she sees Janis Sarkisian looking back at her. Dark hair and all. When she sees her in the mirror, it’s almost like asking ‘hey, where have you been?’.

“Oh, Muffins, no!” Veronica says, wrestling a shoelace-neon green and covered in smiley faces-out of her cat’s mouth. “No, release! Bad boy, bad boy! Why can’t you be more like Popeye?” She pulls it out of his mouth like Arthur lifting Excalibur from the stone. “Dumb cat.”

“He’s not he’s the best cat,” Janis insists, threading another lace through her boot. She looks over at the closed kitchen door, hearing the faint sounds of Mariah Carey through it. “Aunt Veronica?”

“Yeah, kid?” she asks, lifting Popeye into her lap and checking his mouth for anything else. Janis feels the blood running out of her hands, her lungs heavy as though someone was dropping rocks into them.

“How did you… tell your parents?”

Veronica drops the cat, letting him run over to the Christmas tree and try to dig out a stray bauble. Janis pulls her knees up to her chest, pulling at her black skirt, her mouth running dry. Veronica opens and closes her mouth, flexing and unflexing her fingers. Janis keeps her eyes on her as her heart pounds so loudly it drowns out the music. She feels like she’s clinging to Veronica in the eye of a hurricane, begging her not to let the storm sweep her up.

“Um… I told them I was seeing someone,” she begins delicately. “And they asked what his name was. And I said Anna.” She shrugs. “It just sort of went on from there.”

“Well there’s a problem them,” she says bitterly. “I don’t have a someone.” Veronica scoots closer to her and wraps her hand around Janis’.

“Are you planning on telling them?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. “How do I know when it’s the right time?” Veronica shrugs, a sympathetic smile on her face.

“Just go with your gut,” she says. “I’m sorry, Jan. I know you want real answers, but that’s really all I can tell you.”

“Go with my gut,” she repeats. She presses her hand to her stomach as her eyes flit to the closed kitchen door.

Her gut doesn’t tell her anything over the rest of Christmas break. Not during dinner (which is okay, but not a patch on her grandma’s pie), not when they start working out how to put all of Janis’ presents into her suitcase, when they go to see Chicago on Broadway, which as it turns out, comes with its own surprise.

“Janis?” She feels a hand on her shoulder just as she and her parents are coming out of the theatre, her feeling high on the buzz of the crowd and being swept up in two hours of singing, dancing, jazz and… very pretty women in very tight outfits. That high feeling almost plummets completely when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she is sure it would have done entirely if she hadn’t seen who it was.

“Damian?” she asks. They look at each other, dumbfounded, both with their mouths hanging slightly open. Damian chuckles a little, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What are you doing here?” they ask at the exact same time. They open their mouths and close them simultaneously and Janis feels her face going red. Damian grins and gestures to her.

“Ladies first.”

“I’m… staying with my Aunt,” she explains, still trying to make sure he’s actually there. “She lives here. Well, not here as in Broadway but here as in New York. She said she knows someone who works here and got a good deal on the seats. She bought them last night, it was kind of an unplanned thing.”

“Cool!” he says. “I got the tickets for my birthday last year. What are the chances of us being here at the same time?”

“You’re telling me.” Damian stuffs his hand into his back pocket, biting his lip. Janis pushes her sweaty palms together and looks around for her parents or Aunt Veronica. “So… how have you been doing?”

“Fine,” she mumbles. “Um, fine.”

“Cool,” he says. He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s good to see you. They say the art rooms are quiet without you now.”

“Really?” she says. She feels something rising in her throat as her hands start to shake just as her Aunt pushes through the imposing crowd of people and catches sight of her.

“Yeah. Um, hey did you get a Playbill?” Damian asks.

“A what?” she replies, having only heard half of what he said. He shows her what he means; a small program she remembers being handed as she walked in, with CHICAGO written in red against a black backdrop. “Oh that. I think I left it on my seat.” Damian’s mouth falls open like she had just told him that that morning she had taken a dump off the top of the Empire State building.

“Well, here, you can have this one if you want,” he says, handing it over to her. She takes it off him, turning it over in her hand. “I got like five. I’m headed to stage door now to get it signed, want to come with me?”

“They let you meet the cast?” Janis asks.

“This is your first Broadway show isn’t it?” She nods, but to her own surprise, she’s smiling. “Well, some of the cast come out the stage door and you can get it signed by them.” Janis considers the offer, turning the Playbill over in her hands. They’re common enough, she knows everyone in the theatre was given one by an usher, she could easily enough run back and lift a new one, but this one feels different. Still, doubt and anxiety sit in the back of her mind, digging their claws into her brain and she steps back from him.

“Not right now,” she explains. “My Aunt and my parents are waiting.” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Veronica pulling on her scarf just behind her, her parents with her.

“Hey, if you want to hang out with your friend, we can wait, Jan,” her mom says.

“Thanks, Mom, but I just want to go home now,” she replies. “See you…” Later? Around? Next year? Who knows, she supposes. Not her. “When I see you.”

“Okay, see you around,” he says, disappearing into the crowd. Janis smooths out the front of her Playbill and turns around.

“Who was that?” her dad asks.

“Damian. He goes to my school.” At the mention of school, all three of them bristle and Janis doesn’t blame them. Despite how warm she is in the packed lobby under her coat and sweater, she’s shivering. Even Damian, who’s probably the human equivalent of a Labrador puppy, somehow makes cold sweat trickle down her back.

For the first time in months, she thinks to herself fuck Regina George. Fuck her for making her scared and sick and making her pull out of school and making her go to therapy and making her cry and scream. It’s an ugly, angry thought, violent and burning red, but she wonders if there’s a good kind of anger, because this feels good. Lying in bed that night, she whispers “fuck Regina George” into the darkness, and despite everything she’s been taught, she likes how it feels.

In the summer, they go to stay with her dad’s family in France. Janis is barely off the plane when she is bombarded with hugs on all sides from her cousins, a chorus of “Bonjour Janice!” erupting around her. Her younger cousins pull on her now much-shorter hair and ask where it went and her older cousins tell her how good it looks on her. She’s passed around her aunts and uncles so quickly it makes her dizzy, all of them kissing her cheeks and marvelling at how she’s grown. The topic of school is avoided with dignity and grace.

She stays in her cousin Celeste’s room and at least half a dozen of them crowd into it. They sit with wide eyes as Janis tells them about life in America, practically squealing when she tells them about New York and Broadway and shows them photos. Celeste frowns and takes Janis’ phone from her, looking intensely at a picture of her and Veronica outside Chicago.

“Something interesting?” Janis asks, in French, hoping she conveyed what she meant to.

“Who’s that?” Celeste asks, handing her the phone back.

“My Aunt Veronica,” she replies. “My mom’s side.”

“She looks just like you,” she says. Janis looks down at the photo; her and Veronica with their arms around each other, wrapped up in hats out in the New York snow.

“Everyone says that,” she states, turning it to the side. She has never seen the likeness, even though Veronica swears up and down that Janis is a little replica of her when she was 12. She supposes they both have big brown eyes and dark hair, but that’s where it begins and ends for her.

That night she sits in the big living room with her many cousins, all of them in their pyjamas. The lights are off and the three lamps in the room are on, as well as a string of fairy lights above the mantlepiece, casting shadows on the wall, and they drink hot chocolate while going through as many different card games as they possibly can. Right now she’s in a fairly ferocious battle of Spit with Celeste, her six year old cousin Eloise climbing on Janis’ back (not that she’s complaining) to try to get a better look at her cards and whispering in Janis’ ear what cards Celeste has. Celeste snaps at her and Eloise simply buries her face in Janis’ back and giggles with the kind of sweet, high pitched giggle only a six year old can have. Her little fingers run through Janis’ hair, tugging on knots a little but Janis can’t make herself mind. There’s a question in the touch, a silent demand made every time she runs her fingers down Janis’ hair.

“Eloise, can you braid my hair for me?” she asks.

“Yeah,” she replies casually, as though it was an offhand comment and she hadn’t spent the last five minutes looking at Janis’ loose hair. Ever since she could sit up and hold things properly, Eloise was braiding hair. First dolls’ hair and then moving on to people, the main victims being Celeste and their other sister Manon when Janis wasn’t around. She tugs the bands out of her own little pigtails and gets to work, standing behind Janis and clumsily divided her hair into two sections. Janis can feel that one is far bigger than the other, but it’s an unspoken rule that no one corrects Eloise when it comes to hair styling.

Months ago, her hair wouldn’t have been long enough for her little cousin to braid. It’s still not as long as it used to be, just reaching past her neck. The blonde is still dominant, but she still remembers the exact day when she looked in the mirror and saw the first hints of black creeping back in. That same day she dug out old photos from her dad’s study of her when she was younger, when raven hair was falling across her face, and touched her fingers to her roots. It’s silly, she knows, but when the black started coming back, she started crying. She locked the bathroom door and ran the tap so her parents wouldn’t be able to hear (they’ve been through enough with her already). She looked at the reflection, the girl with 98% blonde hair, black starting to invade again. She could feel herself returning with it. Little by little.

“I like your new hair,” Eloise says, patting the top of her head. The black now further down her hair, openly visible to everyone, not just her. “I like it black and yellow. I want mine like that.”

“I like it too,” Janis says.

“Eloise, Mum says you can’t dye your hair until you’re 18,” Celeste reminds her. Eloise pouts as she rakes through Janis’ hair with the brush yanking Janis’ hair back. Her little fingers (meanly called “little sausages” by Celeste) are only half way through a clumsy braid when the living room door opens behind them.

“Well if it isn’t my favourite American,” a voice says behind her, instantly recognisable. Janis breaks into a grin as she feels Eloise’s hands abandon her hair. She turns around just in time to see her jump into the older girl’s arms. Her oldest cousin looks almost nothing like the rest of her family, mostly due to the dyed red hair and the thick make-up she wears every day, making her look so white you wouldn’t believe she spends her days walking around the south of France with the sun beaming down on her.

“Manon!” Janis greets, half laughing while Manon pries her little sister off her and wraps Janis in a hug.

“You’ve gotten too tall. I don’t like it,” she tells her, cupping her face. “I do like the hair, though.”

“Thanks,” she says, grinning. She doesn’t pick favourites with her cousins, but if she did, Manon would probably be up there. Ever since Janis could form coherent thoughts, she remembers idolising her older cousin and even the smallest bit of approval is worth its weight in gold.

“What are we playing?” she asks, sitting down beside Janis, folding her long legs underneath her. Janis always guessed that she inherited her impressive height from her dad’s side of the family.

“Spit,” Celeste says.

“Janis is winning,” Eloise adds.

“Only because you’re a cheat!” Celeste points out. Eloise sticks her tongue out at her, causing Manon to slap her and scold her in a way even Janis’ near-perfect French can’t understand.

“No fighting,” she says. “That’s what mum made you all promise before Janis got here.” She shifts her small purple backpack off her shoulders.

“What did you get?” Eloise asks, eyeing it hopefully.

“Nothing for you,” Manon teases as she opens it. “You’re too little.” Eloise pouts, folding her arms and sticking out her lower lip. Janis knows she needs to act quickly unless she wants a little hurricane in her aunt’s front room.

“El, you said you’d do my hair for me,” she reminds her, gesturing to her half-undone braid. “Look, it’s all coming out!” Eloise’s pout disappears, replaced by an open, bright smile and she races back to Janis to continue yanking and pulling on her hair into a braid. Janis looks over at Celeste and Bella across the room, both of whom raise their eyebrows and bite back giggles, silently saying ‘you’re going to regret this’. Janis nods in reply; she’s already regretting it and trying not to wince in pain, but it’s keeping her littlest cousin happy, so how can she complain?

“Look,” Manon says, pouring her treasure out on the floor. “I got paid yesterday, so I ran to the make-up store the minute I clocked out.”

“Mum says you’re not meant to do that,” Celeste points out.

“Mum says you’re not meant to do that,” Manon mocks. “What mum doesn’t know won’t hurt her. And anyway I’m 19. I can spend my money any way I want.” Janis looks down at her haul spread across the floor; small shining black tubes of lipstick rolling along the carpet, thin boxes containing palettes of dark eyeshadow sleek tubes of mascara, eyeliner pencils that look as sharp as her own drawing pencils and little tubs of white powder. Her cousins keep talking around her, but their voices fade into white noise as she focuses more on the make-up that sits in front of her. She’s worn make-up before; Regina has sat her down in front of her dressing table and given her makeover after makeover, dusting her eyelids with baby pink and coating her lips with lip gloss that felt like slime. And it was all Regina; Regina’s space, Regina’s secret methods of putting it on. Janis asked Regina once, but she just shook her head sweetly, patting Janis on the head and telling her not to worry; she’ll always be around to do her make-up for her.

“Manon,” Janis begins, breaking whatever conversation her cousins had been having. “Do you think you could show me how to use all that?”

That’s how the next morning, Manon’s bedroom door opens just a crack and Janis is permitted to slip inside; Celeste and Eloise watching in open mouthed awe. Janis herself feels like she’s gone through the looking glass and into Wonderland. Neither she nor any of her cousins have been allowed to enter Manon’s bedroom before. She stand sin the middle of her cousin’s white carpeted floor, happily taking in the works of art on the wall, some of clashes of contrasting colours merging together on tiny canvases, some more realistic and tangible depictions of the beach and rolling hill she’s always associated with France.

“You like them?” Manon asks, pulling some more things out of her drawers and setting them out on her vanity. “I bought them off a street vendor.” She pats a small, red-cushioned stool next to her. “Come here. Sit.” Janis scurries over and sits down. Manon takes her chin and makes her look at her. “So you want to know how to use make-up?”

“Yeah,” she said. “The way you do it.” She gestures to her darkened eyes and heavy red lips. “You know… that way.” Her scarlet lips curl into a knowing smile.

“I get it,” she says, nodding. “First thing’s first; how pale do you want to look?”

“Not very,” she says with a frown. Her cousin might look like an ethereal ghost queen (she puts that idea in the back of her mind, knowing there’s a new drawing in it) but she’s not sure she can pull that look off.

“You don’t have to put powder or foundation on if you don’t want,” Manon explains. “I just use it to look two shades paler. Makes the clothes look better.” She gestures to her outfit; a tight black tank top and red denim miniskirt. “But you don’t want to use it?” Janis shakes her head.

“Not right now anyway.”

“Okay, so let’s move on to eye make-up,” she says. She picks up the palette and displays it to Janis. “First, which colour?” She leans forwards, resting her elbows on her knees. The eyeshadow palette isn’t much different from her own paints; they just go on her face rather than her canvas. She studies all of them; from the pale pinks and lilacs (which she immediately rules out) to the deep shades of blue and red and purple and green. They all seem to call out to her, the dark shades feeling right, especially now with her new clothes. Even the sparkling black beckons her. If she and Regina had gone make up shopping together, and Regina hadn’t been… well, Regina, would she have bought these.

“That one,” she says, pointing to a deep emerald shade. Manon smiles and sets it to one side, lifting up a thick pen instead.

“We have to do this first,” she explains, wiggling it in front of her face. “Eyeliner pen. Makes your eyes pop.” She turns the pen over and hands it to Janis, laughing when her eyes go wide. “You wanted to learn how to do it. Not for me to do it. Just take it and I’ll tell you how to do it.” Janis nods, twirling the pen around her fingers as her veins start humming, like she is a wizard and this is her wand. “Okay, close that little eye here and go around your eye- don’t be afraid to be messy, we can tidy it up later-”

It takes a little while for her to master eyeliner and eyeshadow, and then mascara afterwards, but once she does, they just feel like her own pencils and paintbrushes. She sweeps the eyeshadow over her eyelid after she’s finished with the eyeliner pen, going as large as she dares. This is her place, her look, her rules. No-one else’s, not even Manon’s.

“Okay, I think we’re done.” Janis jumps up to try to glimpse at herself in her cousin’s wooden framed mirror, but she finds herself being pushed back onto the stool. “Done with the eyes. Now onto your lips.” She holds three different tubes of lipstick in front of her, their lids off and contents rolled up. “Which colour?” Janis eyes the three shades; dark red, a purple that’s so dark it almost looks black and a lighter shade of purple that stands out starkly against the black of its tube. She considers them all, Manon encouraging her to test them out on her arm, and settles on the dark purple, enchanted by the way it catches the light. “Do you want to try it yourself?”

“Yeah,” she says, taking it from her and thinking about the way her own mom or Aunt Veronica puts lipstick on. She puts on one coat with a steady hand and it already feels too thin. She goes over it a second time, and then a third, building it up from the bottom. She rubs her lips together and hands the tube back to a grinning, impressed Manon.

“Wow,” she breathes. “Do you think you’re finished now?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. She touches her lips, in love with how her fingertip comes away purple. Her leg bounces frantically in time with the beat of her anxious heart. As Manon takes her hand and pulls her in front of the mirror, Janis swears she can feel a thrill similar to her own in her cousin’s hands.

The girl she sees in the mirror makes her gasp out loud. She has the same features as her, but they’re so different, a world away from the reflection she’s grown used to. Her eyes are ringed with black and surrounded by deep green. Does Manon’s make-up somehow make her eyes larger? Her lips are so dark they don’t look natural at all. She doesn’t look pretty, or beautiful or whatever Regina would try to make her look. The girl in the mirror isn’t interested in pretty or beautiful; she looks tough. And powerful. And only slightly scary. This girl doesn’t spend her days crying and she doesn’t stumble over her worlds. This girl doesn’t care and relishes in it. This girl faces the world and says, ‘not today’, with one particular finger stuck up in the air. She’s utterly fearless. She looks like a character Janis would come up with and draw onto a page, but she’s here in the real world.

She’s her.

“Janis?” Manon asks, her fingernails drumming on the back of the chair. “What do you think?”

“I…” A grin spreads across her face and she sees a dark purple smile in the mirror. “I love it!”

Her cousins are fans of her new look too, as she soon discovers when she opens the door and sees them sitting patiently, cross legged on the other side. They squeal and gasp in delight even when Manon starts yelling at them, pulling her into the light to get a better look and practically getting on their knees to have Manon make them over too.

Her parents like it as well, even if it takes them back when she steps into the kitchen with purple lips and green eyelids. Her dad is a little concerned if it makes her look “too old” but Janis assures him it’s just for fun. Her mom sends a picture to Veronica, whose response consists of several “oh my god” s and telling her how mom amazing she looks and wanting to know who did it. She texts Janis on her own phone as well, telling her she looks like “an amazing space queen”. Janis laughs and screenshots the message.

She would have spent all day looking in the mirror at her new look if it weren’t for her aunt’s idea that they all (including the aunts and uncles she isn’t staying with, and those cousins) go out into the sprawling field Manon, Celeste and Eloise got lucky enough to call a garden for a barbeque. Still, she can’t complain when she is treated to the sweet smell of burgers (and veggie burger for her) on the grill, the jewel coloured bowls of salad being set on the table and the incredible view of the town that makes her question why her dad ever left his family’s home and France in the first place; trading emerald grass and endless blue skies for grey pavements and rude pedestrians. Even if those sequences of events led to her birth, who in their right mind would give up this, she wonders as she chases Bella through the grass, her bare arms and legs warmed by the sun and her hair unruly and wild, the sound of everyone calling and laughing at each filling the air like a hundred songbirds.

After dinner, she sits on the hill with her parents, her knees tucked up against her chest. The sky turns pink as the sun sets and for the first time in months, she thinks again about her dad’s offer to go to boarding school here. She has to admit, there are perks. Seeing her cousins every day, hearing them bright and clear rather than distorted through a webcam. Spending the afternoons running through fields under the sun. Eating crepes for breakfast. Living on a different continent from a certain someone.

But then again, she’d be living away from her parents, and despite the tough front she puts on-metaphorically and physically-she’s not sure she could manage without them kissing her good morning and making Sunday breakfasts. And going away wouldn’t solve the bigger issue that’s been looming over her since she left school; if anything it would just delay the inevitable.

She presses her thumb into the palm of her hand; her heartbeat seems to spread around her body, thumping in her arms, pounding in her thighs. She looks up at the pink sky and around the rest of the garden. She watches two of her cousins; Gabrielle and Aline, chasing each other, Aline waving a big stick. Everyone else is dotted around, taking advantage of the expanse of ground their garden covers. She can just about make them out, and that’s when they’re at the top of their lungs. They’d never hear her, even though she may not mind if she did.

Veronica said that her gut would tell her when it was time. And she’s waited months for that feeling, but her gut remained either silent or unsure until now. She’s not sure she’s ever felt a time so right for something.

She crosses her fingers, counts to ten, and hopes her gut doesn’t prove her wrong.

“Mom, Dad,” she begins. Her mouth is so dry, but she leaves the cup of lemonade sitting at her feet, worried that if she starts drinking she won’t stop. “I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Her mom sits up from where she had been lying on her back and takes off her sunglasses. Janis wonders if deep down, her mom already knows, and the possibility scares the shit out of her.

She closes her eyes. Deep breath. In. Out. In. Out.

“I’m-”

One word. Funny how one word can-and did-turn her life upside down. She feels like there’s an invisible, omnipresent being behind her about to flip a coin. Two outcomes. She crosses her fingers tighter.

“I’m a lesbian.”

It’s not like when she told Veronica. Back then she felt like she had yelled it for everyone to hear. Now she feels like she’s in a vacuum and all the air and sounds have been sucked out, leaving only the ringing in her ears. She hugs her knees tighter as she watches her parents processing it, realisation dawning. She wonders if they’re putting anything together, was she showing signs she wasn’t even aware of.

“Okay,” her dad says. He smiles, letting out a breath. “Okay. Um… thank you for telling us.”

“Thank you?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve been holding onto this for a year and all you have is thank you?”

“A year?” her mom asks. “That’s how long you’ve known. A year?”

“More or less,” she confesses, picking at her nail. “Are you guys… mad?”

“Mad?” her mom says. “Why would we ever be mad?” Her dad puts his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s your life, mon cherie,” he tells her. “We’d never be upset with you for this.” He presses a kiss to her head his fingers tracing circles on her upper arm.

“Jan,” her mom says. “If you’ve known for a year… that means when Regina wrote… that word on your locker...” She nods, her throat suddenly constricting. She takes in a shaky breath and curses when she feels her eyes prickling. She’s not sure this eyeliner is waterproof. Her parents pull her into a tight hug. “Oh baby.”

“I don’t know if she knew. Or how she knows,” she confesses. “I mean, it’s not like-do I give off a vibe? Or did I give off one?”

“A vibe?” her dad echoes.

“Like a lesbian vibe,” she explains. “Did I ever look or act gay?”

“I don’t think so, no,” her mom says. Janis presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. They come away stained with black.

“I don’t know how she knew,” she goes on. “Or if she knew. I just-I just panicked.” She rests her chin on her knees, feeling powerless against her herself, unable to stop telling them everything. “That’s why she said she couldn’t invite me to her birthday party. Because she thinks I’m a lesbian.” Knows she’s a lesbian, she guesses. “I don’t know what she thought I was going to do, but it’s too late for that now.” At home, she had sat and looked at everyone’s Facebook wall, watching picture after picture of Regina’s party being posted. She recognised every single person in those pictures, even if she hadn’t spoken to them before and nor has Regina. Everyone in their grade went. Except her. She had wondered if that was deliberate; if Regina wanted her to see all these people who hadn’t been friends with her since they were nine at her party. If that was just extra salt in the wound. She might spend her whole life wondering.

Beside her, her mom turns thunderous. She wonders if there is some left over protective older sister energy inside her from when (if ever) people did something similar to Aunt Veronica.

“Janice,” her dad whispers. “I know you said no to boarding school here. But maybe you might feel more comfortable with a fresh start.”

“Maybe,” she whispers. “But I can’t come all the way out here.” She leans back and takes in the view in front of her. It’s a beautiful scene, begging to be drawn, but not begging her to stay. She shakes her head. “I don’t think I belong here. Besides, Celeste and Gabby showed me the uniforms. Not even Hogwarts would make me wear bottle green.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding. She thought he’d be upset that she doesn’t want to stay in his home country, but maybe he understands. After all, he didn’t really belong there in the end either. “What about New York? That art school your Aunt talked about?”

Janis bites her purple lip. New York isn’t as unappealing as France. It’s closer to her parents for starters. A train journey rather than twelve hours on a plane. And she’d be living with Veronica, the best person she could think of. And she could study art in one of her favourite places. Maybe fall into another group of friends; one made up of fun, quirky, not-straight art freaks like her. Maybe it could be beautiful.

She shakes her head, small enough so that her parents won’t notice. She can’t leave North Shore. It’s her stupid pride that won’t let her leave. She’d thought about a fresh start so many times, one where she never has to see Regina’s face ever again and she can fade away into a sea of names and faces that she’ll eventually forget. She thinks back to the girl she saw in Manon’s mirror; the girls with emerald eyelids and purple lips and bold eyes. That girl doesn’t stand back and let anyone drive her out of school. She doesn’t turn and run. She stands her ground and fights, even if it will amount to nothing.

Janis wants to be that girl.

“I want to go back to school,” she confesses. “Back to North Shore.” Her mom nods, tight-lipped, and Janis can see the cogs turning in her brain. “I need to go back.”

“Yes but needing something and wanting something are two very different things,” her mom mutters, turning to her. “I just want you to be happy. Whether that’s in Chicago, or New York, or France. You think you’ll be happy if you go back?”

“I know I won’t be happy if I stay away,” she answers. Even if the thought of going back to North Shore, and back to Regina, makes her want to throw up, the thought of Regina giggling at her empty seat gives her the urge to punch a window. Despite her months of art therapy, there’s still a buzzing anger that won’t go away, but one of the things she’s learned is that that’s okay.

“Okay,” her mom whispers, stroking her hair. “Okay. I’ll get on the phone with the school district when we get back.”

“Janis,” her dad says. “About this… this lesbian business. There’s one thing I need to ask…” He turns on his side to face her, a smile breaking through his attempt at a stern exterior. “Say it in French.”

Janis throws her head back; her laughter runs up and down the hill and stretches towards the sky.

“Je suis une lesbienne!” she shouts and boy, does it feel good to say it. No nasty baggage or anxiety, no cold sweat or shaky hands, just the sweet sound of that word on her tongue.

On the first of September, she’s standing at the doors of North Shore middle school in her Doc Martens, bright red laces threaded through them, to match her red t-shirt with a dark drawing of an alien on it. She put on a heavy black jacket, mostly at her mom’s request, but she still shivers at the building before her. Surely it hasn’t always been that imposing, right? She clutches at the straps of her backpack, a brand new one to replace last year’s which mysteriously got chewed and clawed to pieces when she was staying in New York. She gave Muffins a little extra food that day.

Not as many people turn to look at her when she opens the door. She had suspected that her grand return to the world of middle school would be a little more… well, grand. But despite some of her old classmates noticing her, hardly anyone cares enough to look up. Still, the ones who do notice her do a double, no doubt taking in her two coloured hair (which now sits in two messy braids), new outfit and heavy make-up.

The make-up was a subject of debate for her mom the night before, who held the school’s code of conduct in front of Janis with one hand and her new lipsticks (which had been gifted to her by Manon just before they boarded their flight home, insisting they were old ones of hers and she didn’t need them anymore) away from her with the other. Even when Janis pointed out that other girls in her grade had worn make-up and not gotten into trouble last year, her mom pointed out that one of those other girls was Regina, and she was hardly an example of a shining role model. And Janis found it hard to argue otherwise.

Still, she eventually gave in, allowing for careful eyeshadow and eyeliner, as well as a promise that maybe later down the line she can wear lipstick to school. For now, she starts the first day of a new year with dark blue eyelids and her eyes framed with thick black lines. She wields it like a suit of armour, daring anyone to cross her path. Unafraid. That’s the world she holds in her mind, repeating it like a mantra. Unafraid. Unafraid. Unafraid.

Her mantra falters slightly when she stands on the outside of her homeroom. Inside she can just make out the shapes of her classmates, still high off the vacation buzz. She can feel Regina in there too, like she gives off an aura, warning potential prey to get lost. Her hand does tremble slightly as she opens the door and makes her way to her desk, picking the one that’s farthest away from the figures on pink.

“Janis!” she calls out. In the time she’s been away, Janis had almost forgotten the sound of her voice. It’s higher than it was in her memories and nightmares, slower; listening to her is like wading through a swamp. Her little heels click off the linoleum, getting louder and closer with each little click until Janis can no longer keep her eye on her book like she had hoped. “Janis!”

“Regina,” she acknowledges. Regina sits herself in the desk in front of her, leaning against the wall. Her blue eyes burn into one part of Janis before moving onto the next, going from top to bottom; hair, eyes, t-shirt, shoes. Janis almost doesn’t blame her. She’s grown used to the girl she’s become, and grown to love her, but to Regina she’s a stranger.

“Nice look,” she says. “Loving the hair. It’s… bold.” Janis smirks. Regina thought she fired the gun at her, not knowing she was sending her a flower instead. “So… what are you doing all the way out here? We’re over there.”

“I’m aware,” Janis says. Regina’s smile falls and her eyes narrow. “Better reading light over here. Or there was anyway.”

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks. “I mean you disappear out of the blue, you come back looking like a Green Day reject. Are you going to sit with the goths now? God, what’s your problem?”

“Regina,” she begins. “Go fuck yourself.”

All talk in the room ceases seemingly with a snap of her fingers. Everyone turns to Regina and Janis like they’re a bullfighter and a matador in the ring. Regina’s eyes narrow, Janis’ “go fuck yourself” seeming to be a red cloth she waves in front of the bull. And somehow, Janis feels freer than she has a in a long while.

“What?” she hisses.

“Preferably with a cactus,” she adds casually and Regina’s pale cheeks begin to turn red.

“God what the hell is wrong with you?” she asks. “Is this about that lesbian thing? You’re still not over that?” Janis stays quiet, but she clutches the edges of her book harder. “God right, well I’m sorry. There, happy now?” The lack of sincerity in her hollow voice makes Janis want to puke on her again. Instead, she raises her head so that her blazing eyes meet Regina’s cold ones. She raises her hand, curled into a fist, and Regina blinks at it in surprise like she’s afraid she’ll punch her in her perfect nose. In a perfect world, she would. But this world isn’t perfect and she doesn’t want her parents to deal with her being suspended on her first day.

So she turns it round and sticks up her middle finger. Regina gapes at it, which quickly turns into a disgusted scowl.

“Freak,” she spits before getting up and walking back to Gretchen and Karen. Janis is left alone at her desk with a confusing mix of emotions. A wave of pride at watching Regina walk away, petty as it might be, but anger still burns in her. It sits in the pit of her stomach even when she doesn’t look at Regina, fizzing through her to the point where it’s next to impossible to concentrate on her book. She drops the book and curls her hand into a fist, almost seeing the red sparks on anger coming out of it.

She feels a new drawing coming on.

Her newest heroine holds her hand out, bright crimson sparks emitting from it that merge together into a steady flame. Her violet hair flies like a flag, magnificent and terrifying all at once. Terrifying especially to the pink-clad witch who kneels before her, begging for mercy from the flames that will soon melt off her skin, calling helplessly to her minions.

She looks across the cafeteria, just about making out Regina’s blonde head. She sits alone in the corner of the cafeteria instead of at her old table, picking at her lunch with one hand while working on her drawings with the other. Still, she holds her head up and grins in the vain hope that Regina sees her. And at least at this table, she feels she can breathe, rather than being strangled by Regina’s mere presence, choosing her words cautiously to avoid a hurricane.

“Hey.” She looks up and finds, of all people, Damian Hubbard hovering next to the seat opposite her, a bundle of papers underneath his tray. “Um, is anyone sitting here?”

“No, help yourself,” she says, waving her hand. He grins as he sits down and it almost makes her smile too. He has some sort of infectious happiness about him. When he pulls the papers out from under his tray and sets them on the table, she sees it’s actually a script. “You doing a show?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “Last year they started auditions for Oliver. Just a little bit after you left. And I’m going to be playing Dodger.”

“No way, that’s really cool,” she says, vaguely remembering some sort of auditions being held last year.

“Yeah, I’m really excited,” he admits. “Oh hey, speaking of theatre, I never got to ask what you thought of Chicago.”

“Oh it was amazing!” she exclaims. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Right? It’s so good! Like I’ve watched the movie so many times but seeing it onstage was incredible. I nearly died about three different times.” He holds up three fingers to emphasise his point. “Three times!”

“But the lead girl! The girl who played Roxie!” She squishes her cheeks, searching for the right words to say.

“She was so amazing!”

“She was so hot!” she corrects him. “Jesus I thought I was going to explode! Her legs-oh my god!”

“I mean… I don’t play for that team, but I will admit that she is one beautiful slice,” he says. She giggles, feeling more and more at ease with every word he says. If he realises, he doesn’t say anything. He simply leans across the table to get a better look at her book. “Sorry, I’m being nosy.”

“It’s fine,” she replies with a shrug.

“It’s really cool,” he says. She wonders if he makes the connection with the blonde haired villain or if she is the only one who can see that. “Are they from something? Like a comic book?”

“Not really,” she admits. “I just sort of make them up.”

“You write comics?”

“I don’t really write them. I just draw them.” She drums her hands on her sketchbook. It’s not the one she brings to therapy, that one sits in a locked drawer in her room. “So how was your summer?”

“Pretty cool. I went to Florida for two weeks, since my grandma lives out there now. So I spent a lot of it at the beach. What about you?”

“I went to France,” she explains. “My dad’s family lives out there.”

“France?” he echoes. “That’s awesome? So you spent all summer out there?”

“Not all summer, I came back a few weeks before school started,” she tells him. “And I went to New York again.”

“Staying with your aunt again?” She nods. “Wow, so you have family basically everywhere?”

“We’re like rabbits,” she says with a grin, even if her dad’s family is mostly concentrated in France (with some older cousins she’s never met in Spain and Italy) her mom’s side consists of her grandparents in Ohio and Veronica, Muffins and Popeye in New York.

Across the table, Damian frowns, realisation slowly creeping onto him.

“So… can you like, speak French?” he asks. “Like, really good French?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” she replies. “My dad says I’m close to fluent. But there’s still some stuff I can’t get. French is weird, you know?”

“Wait, so you’re fluent in French and you’re still taking 8th grade?” he asks. “Why haven’t you been put up a grade or something?”

“Because no one knows,” she says. It’s not entirely true, given that there’s three people across the lunch hall who know, but she wonders if they can even remember that. “And I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t want to be put up a grade and in a class with people I barely know.”

“That’s fair.”

Janis twirls her red pencil around in her hand before shading in her heroine’s pants. Damian still looks on at her drawing, his mouth open in an impressed smile. Part of her is on edge, feeling exposed with him across from her, waiting for the other shoe to drop and the back handed compliments to start coming in one by one.

“So you’ve made up these?” he asks, nodding at the page. “Like they’re your characters?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “Sometimes I just get ideas. Sometimes I draw from real life. Like here…” She flips through the book, hoping it’s still in there after nine months. When she finds it, she turns the book around and slides it towards Damian, keeping one hand on it.

It’s a drawing of Roxie Hart from Chicago. She had been drawing it from memory in her bedroom which is usually a painful task, but not this time. Roxie has been burned into her brain and will probably stay there forever. The curve of her red lip, the curls of her glossy dark hair and the sheer black dress clinging to her lean legs. She’s especially proud of her face; the way she shaded one half and how she captured the ferocity of her eyes. Janis’ cheeks had turned scarlet when she drew it despite her parents telling her how much they loved it. And it seems Damian likes it too.

“Oh my gosh that’s awesome!” His eyes light up as he looks at it, dimples forming in his cheeks.

“Lucky it’s still in there. I draw that back in January.” Her grip on the book tightens. “Just wanted a keepsake, you know?”

“It’s amazing,” he tells you. “You should sell your art. There are so many theatre kids on the forums who would kill for a drawing like this.”

“Maybe.” Maybe, definitely not. Her art is hers and hers alone. It might go up for competitions but it’s absolutely not for sale. That would be like putting her diary up on the walls for everyone to read. She pulls her book back across the table. “But like I said, I kind of just draw for myself.”

“That’s cool,” he replies. His smile falters and she worries that she’s letting her thoughts show on her face. He picks himself back up, the usual sunny disposition back so quickly it’s like she never missed it. Even when the bell rings, he doesn’t let the smile fade. “What do you have next? I have History.”

“Math,” she replies, making a gun with her fingers and shooting herself. “Just what I need on the first day.”

“Ugh, you’re telling me,” he says as they walk up to class. “I had Math this morning, it was so bad. I don’t think I’m going to get any of it. Still…” He flips his head back and motions as though he’s tossing hair over his shoulder. “I won’t need Math when I’m the first bill in a Broadway show.” She cackles as they weave in and out of the mass of students in the halls. “And you won’t need it when you’re selling your art to the highest bidder. Probably some millionaire in a fancy suit with six houses.” Janis bites her lip so that her smile can’t get any wider. They stop off at the door to his history class; her Math class further down the hall and up a flight of stairs.

“So I’ll see you around?” he says.

“Yeah. Sure,” she replies casually, making to leave. Probably to go into his class and hang out with the people he hung out with all of last year.

“Oh, hey,” he says. “So I have rehearsal tomorrow at lunch, but maybe if you want to come down to the auditorium, we can hang out when it’s over?”

For a minute, Janis feels the world stop spinning, only this time it’s not scary. This time a smile forces its way onto her stony face. Part of her wants to say no and retreat to the safe corner of her mind, her lone wolf existence where there’s a thick wall between her and the rest of her classmates. A safe, miserable, but safe existence. That’s probably what she would have done last year. But now-

“Sure,” she says. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Great,” he grins. “See you, little slice.”

Anxiety creeps in almost as soon as Damian disappears. She imagines an ink-black creature made up of jagged lines digging sharp claws into her shoulder and hissing in her ear every possible outcome that it can think of; that this is a trick set up by Regina, that Damian will ditch her the first chance he can, that there’s not even any rehearsal tomorrow. She feels a heavy fear in her gut, wondering if she’ll be feeling this for the rest of middle school. And not for the first time, she curses Regina George for making her feel like this.

But that won’t stop her from going tomorrow, she decides.

After school, she sits in the front seat of her dad’s car, heading not to their house, but out to the ice cream place in town. It’s probably too cold for ice cream now, but that just means it’ll be less crowded and the lines will be shorter. Her dad swears it’s nothing, a mere back to school treat, but Janis calls bullshit. It’s a prize, a “well done for making it through”, a sweet, sugary way of saying “I’m proud of you”. Still, maybe she needed a pick-me-up. Despite one reprieve with Damian at lunch, her school day had felt like a battle. A battle she had won, but she was still left exhausted and winded, invisible bruises forming from where invisible hands punched her and invisible feet kicked her. She lets herself wonder what if she had gone to New York, or even France. Would she have been swept up in the world of middle class New York art scene, or the rural French life? Or would she be hiding behind her art books, too scared to speak to anyone? She’ll never really know, she guesses. Yet despite the fear that wrapped its claws around her ankles the moment she woke up, despite the nervous vomit she had at 4 that morning (that her parents will never know about), she’s glad she stayed around. Even if it was just for that one moment that morning when she finally got to give Regina what she deserved, she’s glad she stayed.

It's far from over. She sees year ahead and the years after stretching out before her, a long, dark road where she’ll face Regina and Karen and Gretchen and everyone else who froze her out every day, right up until the day she graduates high school. Maybe one day she’ll run through no problem only to trip up and fall on her face. Maybe someone will help her up, maybe no one will. Maybe she’ll have one friend, maybe ten, maybe none. She doesn’t know, no one can, not until she steps up and faces it head on. 

Deep breath, she tells herself. In for eight, out for eight. If there’s one thing she’s learned this past year, it’s that she’s a lot tougher than she, and Regina George, initially thought.

**Author's Note:**

> And 21,000 words later we're done. Thank you so much for reading. Janis as a character means so much to me that this fic was so challenging, but also so rewarding to get to tell my interpretation of her story.  
Please leave comments and kudos if you liked it!


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